After the opposition’s motion to include an item on the removal of the speaker of the chamber Tomio Okamura from office did not pass in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament on Tuesday, the opposition parties are considering other options. The chairman of the STAN movement, Vít Rakušan, said at the subsequent briefing that the opposition is not going to accept the refusal, reports TASR in Prague.
“We are considering all options,” answered the Austrian when asked what the next steps would be and whether the parties would eventually submit a proposal to convene an extraordinary meeting. “We are definitely not going to put up with it and we are not going to give up our efforts to ensure that the leadership of the House represents its real majority,” declared the head of STAN.
Criticism of Okamura
The former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Petr Fiala, pointed out that someone who represents the House of Representatives and is the third-highest constitutional official cannot give a speech like the one Okamura gave on New Year’s Day. According to him, the coalition missed the chance to recall Okamura or at least distance himself from his “extreme views”. He added that such opinions can be heard on the floor of the lower chamber, but not from the mouth of the one who stands at its head.
“It turns out that I was right when I warned against the election of Tomio Okamura as the head of the Chamber of Deputies. I used examples of his statements over the last ten years to show that this person cannot represent the Chamber of Deputies and be among the highest constitutional officials of the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, the government coalition pushed him into this position with their votes, and when he showed absolute incompetence after a month, they kept him in office,” he emphasized ex-prime minister.
Opposition proposal rejected
On Tuesday, the Czech opposition submitted a joint motion to remove Okamura from the position of Speaker of the Chamber and submitted all 92 signatures of opposition deputies. At the beginning of the meeting, she asked to include this item in the agenda of the current meeting. But that didn’t go through. 90 MPs voted for the proposal, 108 were against it. It was not even possible to include an item on the agenda of the meeting with the Austrian’s proposal for a resolution by which the Chamber would distance itself from the statements of the head of the SPD.
In his New Year’s speech, Okamura criticized the leadership of Ukraine and spoke, for example, of “Ukrainian thieves around the Zelensky junta” and also spoke out against Ukraine’s entry into the EU. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš commented by saying that Okamura was speaking to his voters and apparently wanted to address the voters of Stačilo!, which did not reach the House of Representatives.
